Predictions: What does 2016 look like?

Industry Forecasts 2016

Small Businesses

“With the UK economy continuing to strengthen, it is encouraging to see that a significant number of business leaders in small and medium sized enterprises are expecting to see their business expand throughout 2016,” said Mike Randall,CEO of Close Brothers Asset Finance.

“It’s now easier than ever to develop custom software applications, and as a result, enterprise technology is no longer limited to large corporations. Small businesses have access to tools that will help their business not only stay competitive, but [also] thrive. As examples, POS systems, CRM software and HR management platforms were costly and complicated, but this is no longer the case. We predict that 2016 will be the year small businesses, which were once the backbone of our country, make a strong comeback.” — Jonathan Wasserstrum, Co-Founder & CEO, TheSquareFoot

Market Research

The need for shorter surveys was a hot topic in the industry during 2015, as evidenced by The Future Place Managing Director Ray Poynter’s Vision Critical blog post declaring, “The long market research survey (anything that takes over 20 minutes to finish) is a dead man walking.”

“There will be more moves into location-based research, social listening, and in particular the use of mobile. Expect to see the proportion of online surveys completed from mobile devices approach 50%. Expect to see more tools for processing images and videos, and expect to see automation have an impact in this area too. The smartphone is the device of now and the near future, if what you are doing does not work with a smartphone it may be doomed.” — Ray Poynter

Finance

“We are now just one big shock away from a global downturn, and the next one seems most likely to originate in China, where heavy debt, excessive investment, and population decline are combining to undermine growth, while relatively low-debt countries from Eastern Europe to South Asia look better positioned to weather the inevitable next turn in the cycle.” — Ruchir Sharma, Head of Emerging Markets Equity & Global Macro, Morgan Stanley Investment Management

Human Resources & Talent

“This year’s global salary forecast shows that, for the majority of countries, real wage increases in 2016 are set to be the highest in three years. Differing macro-economic conditions means there are stark variations globally. But overall, decent pay increases, coupled with extremely low (and in some cases, zero) inflation, mean that the outlook is positive for workers.”– Philip Spriet, Global Managing Director for Productized Services at Hay Group.

Mobility

“Many Web-based sites will be challenged by mobile — Wallapop, Close5, Sell It Easy, OfferUp, and Varage Sale are all companies that are targeting eBay and Craigslist for selling your old junk. But instead of posting an ad on a Web page, you do everything from your smartphone. If this takes off, they could take a chunk out of the hides of CL and eBay, although I fully expect both sites to come out with their own apps to do the same.” — Andy-Patrizio, Freelance Journalist who has covered the computer industry for 20 years.

“[Two big trends will be] mobility as a primary compute platform and [devices] fading to the background. It’s the whole notion of work-life integration, rather than work-life balance. That’s what I mean by [devices] fading into the background; they just become so integrated with what you do. You’re in the car and you start something, and you go into the office and you start another task, and you move into a conference room and you just keep right on going. Maybe another way to say that would be comfortable computing: There’s just a comfort and familiarity with mobile working that it’s no longer a big deal.” — Benjamin Robbins, Principal at Palador